BRUSSELS, 11 Mar: Sweden\u2019s national flag was raised at NATO headquarters on Monday, cementing the Nordic country\u2019s place as the 32nd member of the alliance two years after Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine persuaded its reluctant public to seek safety under NATO\u2019s security umbrella.
\nUnder a steady rain, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg looked on as two soldiers raised the blue banner emblazoned with a yellow cross among the official circle of national flags at the headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.
\n\u201cWe are humble, but we are also proud. We know the expectations for Sweden are high, but we also have high expectations for ourselves,\u201d Kristersson told reporters minutes before the ceremony. \u201cWe will share burdens, responsibilities and risks with our allies.\u201d
\nSweden set aside decades of post-World War II neutrality when it formally joined NATO last Thursday. Its neighbor Finland had already joined in April 2023 in another historic move ending years of military nonalignment.
\nFinland\u2019s defense ministry welcomed \u201cour brothers and sisters in arms\u201d on X, formerly Twitter, saying \u201cnow we stand at the beginning of a new era. Together and with other allies in peace, in crisis and beyond.\u201d
\nPresident Vladimir Putin\u2019s decision to order Russian troops into Ukraine in February 2022 triggered an about-face in public opinion in both countries, and within three months they had applied to join the world\u2019s biggest security organization.
\nPutin claimed to have launched the war, at least in part, over NATO\u2019s eastward expansion toward Russia but it has swollen the alliance\u2019s ranks. NATO leaders have promised that Ukraine itself will join one day, although almost certainly not while the conflict rages on.
\n\u201cWhen President Putin launched his full-scale invasion two years ago, he wanted less NATO, and more control over his neighbors. He wanted to destroy Ukraine as a sovereign state, but he failed,\u201d Stoltenberg said.
\n\u201cNATO is now bigger and stronger. Ukraine is closer to NATO than ever before, and as the brave Ukrainians continue to fight for their freedom, we stand by their side,\u201d he said.
\nSweden\u2019s membership completes a strategic ring of NATO territory around the Baltic Sea. The country now benefits from the alliance\u2019s collective security guarantee -\u2013 Article 5 of its treaty -\u2013 a vow that an attack on one of them will be met by a response from them all.
\nThe flag-raising ceremony came as 20,000 troops from 13 countries began NATO drills in the high north of new member Sweden as well as its neighbors Finland and Norway.
\nThe Nordic drill is part of wider exercises called Steadfast Defender 24, NATO\u2019s largest in decades, with up to 90,000 troops taking part over several months to show any adversary that the alliance can defend all of its territory from North America up to its borders with Russia. (AP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BRUSSELS, 11 Mar: Sweden\u2019s national flag was raised at NATO headquarters on Monday, cementing the Nordic country\u2019s place as the 32nd member of the alliance two years after Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine persuaded its reluctant public to seek safety under NATO\u2019s security umbrella. Under a steady rain, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and NATO Secretary-General […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-236814","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236814\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}